General Motors Corporation

General Motors Corporation was founded in 1908 and remains headquartered at the place of its establishment in Detroit, Michigan.

History
In 1921, after a period of declining sales, GM set out to bring down its major competition: electric streetcars. By using the business its automotive transportation brought to freight carriers as leverage, GM pressured railways like Southern Pacific and New York Central to abandon their electric lines. Electric lines were replaced by the omnibus, the inferiority of which drove people who had previously frequented electric lines to buy cars. GM was more than happy to fulfill their newly-found need.

The Oil Crisis of the 1970s saw GMs profit margins shrink drastically again after nearly 50 years at the top of the automotive industry. GM consequentially cut thousands of jobs, shutting down plants across the country. The infamous plant closings in Flint, MI, where 30,000 auto workers lost their jobs in the same town, were documented and made into a symbol of the company's early downsizing by Michael Moore's 1989 documentary Roger & Me.

As of June 2005, General Motors has announced that it is going to cut a total of 30,000 jobs and an unspecified number of plants over the course of 2005, according to several news outlets.

History of GM Colmotores S.A.
GM Colmotores, S.A. is a car company based in Bogota, Colombia. They are under license to manufacture a variety of GM, Daewoo, Isuzu and Suzuki vehicles in the local market, under the Chevrolet name.

On July 27, 1956, the Colombian Automotive Factory S.A., Colmotores, was founded. One month later, it was written into the constitution and on August 25th, it started with an initial capital of 5 million pesos to support various regions of Colombia especially Antioquia, Cundinamarca, Caldas and the coast. Manufacturing began under the presidency of Santiago Trujillo and the general management of Germán Montoya and construction ended in 1961. The company entered into negotiations with the British Motor Corporation to assemble Austin vehicles in Colombia.

The Colmotores plant was inaugurated in February 1962 by Dr. Alberto Lleras Camargo, the President of the Republic, and the Assistant Bishop of Bogota, Emilio de Brigard, blessed the workers and the installations. Within four years, Colmotores had produced 4000 vehicles.

In 1965, Chrysler International had acquired 60 percent of the actions by Colmotores and the company’s name changed to Chrysler Colmotores. The following year, the manufacturing and sale of Dodge cars began, and the first Colombian produced automobile was the Coronet 440 and the Dodge trucks from 1 to 7 tons. The following year, began assembly of Simca vehicles. Chrysler’s control over Colmotores lasted until 1972 with the gas crisis and then in 1979, Colmotors was acquired by General Motors. GM changed Colmotor’s name to General Motors Colmotores, S.A. in 1981.

Fake TV news
In the Center for Media and Democracy's April 2006 expose of video news releases (VNRs), titled "Fake TV News: Widespread and Undisclosed," three of the 36 VNRs tracked were funded by and scripted for General Motors. All three were produced by the broadcast PR firm Medialink Worldwide. 

One VNR, from January 2006, celebrated GM's corporate headquarters, the Renaissance Center, as key to the revitalization of downtown Detroit. Another VNR, from March 2006, falsely claimed that GM had launched the first auto manufacturer web site in 1996. The third VNR, from the same month, touted the benefits of becoming an auto technician, a likely response to industry staffing and image problems. 

CMD's November 2006 report, "Still Not the News: Stations Overwhelmingly Fail to Disclose VNRs," identified several more GM-funded VNRs released via Medialink. Five of the 33 VNRs described in the report came from General Motors:
 * A May 2006 VNR titled "Vehicle Crash Safety";
 * A June 2006 VNR featuring GM executive Robert A. Lutz, which promoted the company's convertible cars;
 * A July 2006 VNR about a child safety seat program;
 * An August 2006 VNR about hybrid cars; and
 * A September 2006 VNR about teen drivers and safety.

Buying off journalism students
"Maybe I’m just a bit jaded, but I have a problem with this solicitation," wrote University of North Carolina business journalism professor Chris Roush. On a UNC journalism blog, he posted an email that he received on August 30, 2006, "from a public relations person at General Motors ... asking me to send student journalists to an event that the company will be holding in Las Vegas next month." He added, "It seems what young student journalists would be 'learning' from this experience is how to take a free trip and meals from one of the company’s largest corporations." 

The email, from GM's western region PR staffer Diedra Wylie, describes "General Motors’ First College Journalists Event taking place in Las Vegas, NV on September 9-10th." She added, "While in Las Vegas the college journalists will have the opportunity to meet with professional journalists and GM executives who’ll be in attendance. GM will pay for travel, hotel and meals for students that attend." 

GM's Andrea Canabal, who organized the event with Wylie, told PR Week, "I would hope [the students'] opinion wouldn't be swayed by a free trip." According to Canabal, the auto maker "approached the faculty advisors of the college papers first, asking them if it was okay to pitch the trip to the students." She said that "ten schools, including Duke, Penn, Purdue, Washington, and Missouri had signed off on the proposal." 

Advertorials
GM CEO Rick Wagoner told attendees of the 2007 Newspaper Association of America conference, "One area where we're beginning to do more, and will want to work with newspapers to explore new options in, is advertorials." Advertorials are ads written as though they are independent op/ed columns. Wagoner said that GM was putting less money towards traditional print ads in part because the company no longer offers a "deal of the month." 

GM is also interested in overseas promotion. "Some of you own foreign-language newspapers that may have links to papers in other countries," explained Wagoner. "Hispanic papers with links to South America or the Caribbean, for example. Others, I'm sure, have business or editorial connections with foreign newspapers that we at GM probably have no idea about." 

"GMnext" and greenwashing
In January 2008, General Motors launched a new website, "GMnext" (which includes a wiki), to mark its 100th anniversary and showcase "ideas on future automotive technologies," reported the Financial Times. Instead, environmental activists posted critiques of the company. GM called the posts on climate change and other issues "diatribes loaded with propaganda," and shut down the interactive part of the site. "We weren't going to lose control of our own site," explained the automaker. Instead, GM's Brent Dewar answered pre-submitted questions on greenwashing during an online chat on February 6, 2008.

Rainforest Action Network slammed Dewar for "the large number of questions he ignored and the indirect responses he gave to the most pointed inquiries." Marketing professor Clay Voorhees saw GM's efforts as "part of a new push for authenticity by companies," reported Detroit News. Over the past year, GM has also "invited dozens of bloggers to car shows across the U.S., setting up face-to-face interviews with senior executives."

Global warming "a crock"
In January 2008, GM executive Bob Lutz (who's appeared in the company's video news releases ) told reporters in a closed-door meeting that global warming is "a total crock of shit." "Within hours the remark was reported on the internet, and spread, as Lutz subsequently lamented, 'like ragweed,'" reported Green Left.

Lutz "had earlier derided efforts to force car companies to build smaller, more fuel-efficient vehicles. Such attempts, he wrote on GM's blog, were 'like trying to address the obesity problem ... by forcing clothing manufacturers to sell smaller, tighter sizes.'"

Other Lutz quotes regarding environmental issues include criticisms of raising fuel efficiency standards:
 * "CAFE is a totally flawed strategy ... It has never worked and it never will. ... If I were dictator of America, I would gradually raise the price of gasoline by 25 cents every six months or so, until it's more in line with gas prices in the rest of the world."

Lutz also accused the American Petroleum Institute "of running a multi-million dollar smear campaign against ethanol," reported BusinessWeek:
 * "They make it sound like ethanol is taking food out of the mouths of babes. According to them, we're going to have taco riots in Mexico because of ethanol." Lutz did admit that the net energy benefits of corn-based ethanol are "not what we would like to see" and pointed to the development of next-generation cellulosic ethanol as a necessary step.

Political contributions
General Motors gave $626,330 to federal candidates in the 05/06 election cycle through its political action committee (PAC) - 26% went to Democrats and 74% went to Republicans.

GM was among various companies that gave record amounts in political contributions four years after passage of a law that tried to reduce the impact of corporate money in U.S. politics. Bloomberg said, "The companies are working around the law, which banned unlimited contributions to parties, by giving more money through their political action committees than ever before in the first year of an election cycle, and writing checks to loosely regulated independent groups, financial disclosures show."

Lobbying
GM spent $8,805,000 on lobbying in 2006. $3,965,000 of this total went to over 20 outside lobbying firms.

The following is a list of lobbyist and PR groups which currently list General Motors among their clients.


 * BKSH & Associates, member of Burson-Marsteller
 * Clark Consulting Federal Policy
 * Davis & Harman LLP
 * Dewey Square Group
 * DLA Piper Rudnick Gray Cary
 * The Duberstein Group, Inc.
 * e-Copernicus
 * Greenberg Traurig LLP
 * Hogan & Hartson LLP
 * Jennings Policy Strategies Inc.
 * Bob Moss & Associates
 * Nickles Group LLC
 * The OB-C Group LLC
 * Parry Romani DeConcini & Symms
 * RGS Enterprises Inc.
 * Ricchetti Inc.
 * The Status Group
 * Thompson and Naughton Inc.
 * Van Scoyoc Associates, Inc.
 * Wexler and Walker Public Policy Associates

Public relations
In February 2009, the Detroit News reported that GM had hired Democratic Party political consultant Michael Whouley, who also does corporate PR at the Dewey Square Group PR firm. "Whouley's addition comes as even some of the companies' allies in Washington have raised questions about GM's political and public relations strategy. ... Last week, when GM CEO Rick Wagoner met with members of Congress, he did not mention that the company would ask for up to $16.6 billion in new federal aid, according to several sources familiar with the discussions. The size of the request surprised even some of the company's staunchest defenders. ... Whouley is widely considered to be one of the Democratic Party's best organizers of grass-roots campaigns, focusing on building field organizations and get-out-the-vote operations for election campaigns. His hiring is likely a signal that GM wants to increase efforts outside Washington to build political support."

"GM's environmental push, which is handled by Manning, Selvage & Lee, has been gaining major traction," reported O'Dwyer's PR Daily in January 2008. "More than half of respondents (51 percent) say their perception of GM is more positive than a year ago. Thirty-five percent of those people credit the automaker’s environmental commitment as the reason for their better opinion of GM."

On January 13, 2008, GM's Rick Wagoner announced his company's partnership with Coskata Inc., "to produce ethanol from various renewable sources, such as garbage, old tires, and plant waste." Wagoner "hailed Coskata's proprietary process that promises to produce ethanol for less than $1 a gallon."

Personnel
Key GM executives and 2006 pay:
 * G. Richard Wagoner, Jr, Chairman, Chief Executive Officer of Gen. Motors Acceptance Corp., $1,280,000
 * Frederick A. Henderson, Chief Financial Officer, $1,160,000
 * Robert A. Lutz, Vice Chairman of Global Product Development, $1,160,000


 * Bo I. Andersson, Vice President, Global Purchasing and Supply Chain
 * Kathleen S. Barclay, Vice President, Global Human Resources
 * Walter G. Borst, Treasurer
 * Jonathan Browning, Europe Vice President, Sales, Marketing and Aftersales
 * Lawrence D. Burns, Vice President, Research & Development and Strategic Planning
 * Kenneth W. Cole, Vice President, Government Relations
 * Roderick D. Gillum, Vice President, Corporate Responsibility and Diversity

Selected GM board members:
 * Percy N. Barnevik, Retired Chairman, AstraZeneca
 * Karen Katen, Retired Vice Chairman, Pfizer Inc
 * Kent Kresa, Chairman Emeritus, Northrop Grumman
 * Philip A. Laskawy, Retired Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Ernst & Young

Financial information
Ticker Symbol: Main Exchanges: Investor Website: NYSE Symbol:
 * GM - GM common stock
 * GMH - Class H common stock

Contact information
300 Renaissance Center Detroit, MI 48265 Phone: (313) 556-5000 Fax: (313) 556-5108 Web: http://www.gm.com

GM Colmotores, S.A. Tel: +57-1-424-9393 Toll-free: 01-8000-124-389

Related SourceWatch articles

 * Dewey Square Group
 * Fake news
 * Medialink Worldwide
 * Michael Whouley
 * MS&L
 * Video news releases

External articles

 * GM's "Earth-Deadly" Hummer A Hot Selling Climate Killer node - John Stauber - 11/01/2002
 * GM Wins Greenwash Award node - Laura Miller - 11/06/2002
 * Auto Industry Front Group Opposes California Clean Air Proposal node - Laura Miller - 08/25/2004
 * Diane Farsetta and Daniel Price, "Fake TV News: Widespread and Undisclosed," Center for Media and Democracy, April 6, 2006.
 * "General Motors hires Morgan Stanley analyst as adviser," Detroit Free Press, July 18, 2005
 * Kortney Stringer. "GM will target TiVo viewers with its ads," Detroit Free Press, July 19, 2005.
 * Hamilton Nolan, "GM event reaches out to college students," PR Week (sub req'd), September 6, 2006.
 * Hoag Levins, "GM Wants More Newspaper Advertorials: CEO Rick Wagoner Also Eyes U.S. Papers for Foreign Promotional Deals," Advertising Age, May 9, 2007.
 * Timothy Gardner, "GM Seeks to Help Retailers Sell Ethanol-Rich Fuel," Reuters, January 15, 2008.
 * Renfrey Clarke, "Corporations and climate change," Green Left (Australia), March 29, 2008.
 * Greg Palast, "Grand Theft Auto: The Bankruptcy of General Motors", Global Research, June 1, 2009.